Between September of 2014 and September of 2017, I wrote a fourteen-part series on the myths and lies Republicans and conservatives tell about health care, climate change and many other subjects. Donald Trump killed the series. How can I possibly fact check a President who more made more than 13,000 false and misleading statements during his first 1,000 days in office?
But now that Trump is facing impeachment, I can't help but bring the subject of conservative lies out of retirement, given the furious way Republicans are using every kind of falsehood and misleading argument in a desperate attempt to keep Trump in office. Before we dive in, a quick review of where we are: In September, Democrats commenced hearings that might have lead to the impeachment of President Trump when they subpoenaed former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski in connection with the Special Counsel investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections and suspicious links between Trump associates and Russian officials, conducted by special prosecutor Robert Mueller from May 2017 to March 2019. Long story short, Trump's actions in the Mueller investigation left him open to charges of obstruction of justice. There's also been talk of impeachment of Trump over the Stormy Daniels payoff, and his violations of the emoluments clause of the Constitution.
Suddenly, a bombshell: a whistleblower's complaint was given to Congress on September 25, 2019 revealing a phone call between Trump and Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky implying that U.S. military aid approved by Congress to Ukraine was to be withheld until Zelensky gave in to demands that the leaders of Ukraine publicly announce investigations of former U.S. vice president and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that six committees of the House of Representatives would undertake a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump. Those committees began taking depositions immediately, and public hearings started this week.
Republicans in response have been throwing out excuse they can think of to derail the impeachment of Trump, including, "Trump is too dumb to commit this crime." That one is a bit too subjective for this blog post; I'll be sticking to the Republican excuses that are objectively false. And away we go.
Myth: The whistleblower complaint is not legitimate, as it is "hearsay".
Fact: In the first days in the formal impeachment inquiry, Republicans complained a lot that the Democrats shouldn't even be able to hold hearings, or demonstrate that Trump might have committed a crime on the Trump-Zelensky call, as the government official who submitted the complaint didn't actually hear the call. From Sarah Lustbader of the Washington Post, "The first problem with the Republicans’ hearsay defense is that the White House’s rough transcript confirmed much of what the whistleblower was told by several officials. But even if that memo had not been released, the complaints about hearsay would be missing the mark. Hearsay does not mean "unreliable information," and it can play an important and legitimate part in many kinds of investigations and legal proceedings. So while Trump and his allies are correct that the whistleblower report could not, by itself, be introduced as evidence in a criminal trial, that’s entirely beside the point." And of course, the "hearsay defense" has been rendered moot by the fact that we have a transcript of the Trump-Zelensky phone call with a smoking gun in the form of the now infamous "prid pro quo". Speaking of which...
Myth: There was "no quid pro quo" - there exists no evidence that the reason why Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine was because he was pressuring officials there to open investigations of Joe and Hunter Biden.
Fact:
1. The quid pro quo is in the call transcript that was the basis for the whistleblower complaint:
Zelensky: "We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps. Specifically we are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United· States for defense purposes."
Trump: "I would like you to do us a favor though"
Now the above exchange doesn't prove that Trump withheld the aid Congress approved in return for an investigation of the Bidens. However,
2. White House Chief of Staff Mike Mulvaney (bizarrely) flat-out admitted the quid pro quo. From CNN: "White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney made a stunning admission Thursday by confirming that President Donald Trump froze nearly $400 million in US security aid to Ukraine in part to pressure that country into investigating Democrats."
"That's why we held up the money," Mulvaney said"... "Get over it."... "We do that all the time with foreign policy."
Now Mulvaney quickly tried to walk back that admission, but the quid pro quo had been proven in myriad ways, including:
3. Rudy Giuliani, the President's personal lawyer, told U.S. special envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker to push Ukraine's newly elected president to publicly promise he would order an investigation into Hunter Biden.
4. Based on a phone conversation with Trump, Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, told a Ukrainian official that security assistance to the country would be likely to resume only if the authorities in Kyiv opened the Biden investigations.
Other U.S. government officials have confirmed these same facts.
Myth: According to the White House, the investigation is not legitimate because the full House had not voted to authorize it.
Fact: No full vote is needed to authorize an investigation and the House is not obligated to let Trump’s lawyers participate. This argument was rendered moot by the House's full authorization vote, passed on Halloween no less.
Myth: The Democrats' early closed-door impeachments hearings were an unfair, dangerous and secretive process.
Fact: The House rules being used by Chairman Adam Schiff have been in place since 2015 when Republicans were in the majority. "The House rules permit committee chairs to hold closed hearings on matters of national security or intelligence. Diplomatic matters implicate both national security and intelligence. The rules also permit standing committees – as opposed to the full House – to issue subpoenas. As well, they permit interviews of witnesses in secret in order to determine if they are credible enough to present in public." - Fox News political commentator and legal analyst Andrew Napolitano
Myth: Speaker Pelosi has suggested that the quid pro quo may result in an impeachment charge of bribery against the President, but, "Attempted bribery isn't in the Constitution." - Laura Ingrahan of Fox News
Fact: Some Republicans are trying to suggest that the quid pro quo, if it did exist, isn't a criminal act or an impeachable offense. However, (from John Nichols of The Nation): "Apart from the problem of a "defense" that suggests the president was trying to do wrong but didn’t fully achieve his goal, this argument splits the wrong hair. Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute reminds us: "Attempts to bribe exist at common law and under the Model Penal Code, and often, the punishment for attempted bribery and completed bribery are identical." That’s useful. But even more useful is an understanding of the fact that impeachment is not a legal intervention that requires evidence of a specific criminal act or statutory violation, as President Trump and so many of Republican allies on the House Intelligence Committee so desperately want the American people and their elected officials to imagine."
Myth: The aid was eventually released, and President Zelensky has said he did not feel pressured to open the Biden investigations. So if there's no victim, there's no crime. Republican Senator Kevin Cramer of North Dakota: "Zelensky doesn’t feel like he was pressured. I don’t know who the rest of the world is to feel victimized on his behalf."
Fact: The U.S. authorized the aid to the Ukraine as a matter of national security. By delaying the aid package, the victims were the American people. According to Laura Cooper, a Defense Department official, whose deposition was released Monday in the House impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump: "My sense is that all of the senior leaders of the U.S. national security departments and agencies were all unified in their — in their view that this assistance was essential," she said. "And they were trying to find ways to engage the President on this."
Furthermore, while Zelensky did state, while sitting next to President Trump, that he was not pressured by Trump to open the Biden investigations, in private he was very concerned about the quid pro quo. From the Chicago Tribune: "Volodymyr Zelenskiy gathered a small group of advisers on May 7 in Kyiv for a meeting that was supposed to be about his nation's energy needs. Instead, the group spent most of the three-hour discussion talking about how to navigate the insistence from Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, for a probe and how to avoid becoming entangled in the American elections, according to three people familiar with the details of the meeting."
"The three people's recollections differ on whether Zelenskiy specifically cited that first call with Trump as the source of his unease. But their accounts all show the Ukrainian president-elect was wary of Trump's push for an investigation into the former vice president and his son Hunter's business dealings."
Much more to come as we enter the second public week of impeachment hearings.
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